


Ineffable

by HazelnutGlass



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Angst, One Shot, Past Character Death, Past Lives, Reincarnation, don't worry no one dies in the present life, implied ereri, mention of suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-30
Updated: 2015-11-30
Packaged: 2018-05-04 05:19:30
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 758
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5321921
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HazelnutGlass/pseuds/HazelnutGlass
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Eren's past life has always haunted him for as long as he can remember. There seems to be no escape in finding refuge from his own mind.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ineffable

He’s sure he came into the world as spat out spit – an amalgamation of flittering tree canopies with the sunbeams of childhood. Forgotten dreams of a heat so strong secluded in the imagination of something that feels so real. The blood is thick on his tongue and he can’t swallow it back down. But he feels so hungry. For years and years he felt unsettled not knowing what his mind wanted- mornings wasted for a life he lived before. He lies down on the ashes letting his ribs fan out into a pair of wings. A person with wings might just as well be blind with no designation. So he travels to ease his hunger. To quiet his rambling mind. The wide blue sky is his home and green thrills him so much, so much, there is always something green and pain among the sequoia giants. He muses one June. Of how he thought he saw his past life at a platform in Düsseldorf. Remembering wide-open plains singing “lay me down and take me home” with his nose in a clavicle. Two feathers of a kind all skin and bones among sharp hands that trace each life. Trained to forever go with the flow. Stutter. Breathe in. Inhale. Breathe out. Exhale. “We will try again every time the sun rises” is what is promised. He likens the knobs of the spine to the tree rings of 2,000 years. Eren is sorry that he can not see the delicate strands of Levi’s iris that weave the story of his flesh. The vibrato of his skeleton of centuries past flows through Eren’s hands that roam all over. There is bubbling panic. He last remembers an infinite field of Nemophilia menzenii*. It was dreams of red promising the both to be guided to wherever the tide flows. And perhaps that they would meet again to touch the edge of each other’s hollow souls meeting the universe. 

 

It never happened. There is long nights Eren spends awake with the moon dripping down the walls. Green was grey at 4am. And there he is, prone and fetal, tasting the humidity so thick with screams. Pitching to where he cannot tolerate reality and is dragged out with water splashing on his face and garbled words whispering. Most days it feels like gnawing his way back home. (His home is only a pair of eyes). A newborn skull of nightmares is what Eren cradles every night. There is so much crying staying up until the new world breaks.

 

“Bitte zurücktreten, zug fährt auf Gleis fünfzehn**” cuts into Eren’s past life. Blurred faces rush past rolling on and on like a film reel spliced into his mind. He does not see the pair of eyes next to him. One foot at a time, one step a day. Life moves on. But the unease remains. The desire to turn himself inside out remains. Perhaps it would be better if he ended on the tracks but he has not thought to do so since that day. 

It is in Andheri that his mind finds what it hungered for. Closure. A familiar voice sat next to him and Eren did not need to look up. The voice is the owner of his past. 

“If I may recall, the last time I gave you advice,” it sighs, “we were in the sequoias - the forest of giant trees. I had said to you ‘the only thing we’re allowed to believe is that we won’t regret the choice we made’.”

Eren cannot say anything. The memory of ringing plays in his ears and a motion of weightlessness. His vision pinpoints to the feeling of his own hands clasped over his neck. He is doubled over in his seat between vibrating knees. 

It continues, “I see it all the time too. You’re not alone. But only you can decide if we exist only within a conscious mind. “

 

Silence falls along with something Eren hasn’t felt in years. Nothing meets his eyes when he looks up and something breaks inside of him. He cries. He cries and cries and cries. But he does not do so out of happiness nor does he do so out of sadness. He cries out of peace strung from those few words spoken to the air that he gulps in. He is full of the life he had left behind. He does not hunger for that life anymore. That very night, he lays the skull down to rest. 7,665 days not wasted. He is just Eren now.

**Author's Note:**

> Oi hey there! This is my first real piece of writing for this fandom (or any fandom for that matter) and it's my first time posting on AO3. This was inspired mostly by a dream I had a few weeks ago. I added a new paragraph, which this post didn't have the first time I uploaded this.  
> *Nemophilia Menziesii is the scientific name for a type of flower called baby blue eyes that is native to western north america  
> ** Translation: Please step back, train ride on track 15.


End file.
